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Suckerpunch

There are many ways to complete victory. Sometimes the suckerpunch, although unfair, is the quickest and most total route.

I’m mostly a harmless sociopath. I don’t actively go out looking for trouble or for avenues to ruin lives. I realize on some level that it is really not to my benefit to go do such. But sometimes, the stars align and I become an unholy force of vengeance. This post is a continuation of Vendettaand Poison.

One of the greatest tools of the sociopath is the building of genuine relationships. Well, at least as genuine a relationship that is truly possible for the psychopath. By getting to know an acquaintance fully and by feigning enough empathy and care to have them believe that you are truly invested in them, you ultimately hold their lives in your fingers like a puppetmaster and his marionettes.

There have been many in my life that have satisfied such criteria. I lost many of them when I came out as transgender and I lost many more when I ultimately decided that their price of admission was, simply, too high. So, in other words, generally my friendships come crashing to an end because of either their inability to invest in me or my ability to invest in them. Granted, my bar for determining what is too much effort for a friendship is admittedly lower than most. The most satisfying ends to a friendship come with a suckerpunch, however; when I decide that not only do I want no more to do with that person but that I’d like to taste their blood on the way out.

I had built such a friendship, more accurately – a professional relationship, with one person over a several year period. The professional relationship was a satisfying one and our work together was mutually beneficial. However, one day she crossed the line and actively harmed me. Maybe intentionally. Maybe not. Ultimately, the slight was not even that noteworthy in the grand scheme of things. But it did not matter, I was angry and immediately began plotting as total of a demise for her as possible.

Because we had such a strong relationship before, she never saw my fury coming. I normally like to try and ‘play fair’ in order to ensure that I am winning based on my skill alone, but I was so enraged that I decided that a more appropriate tact was take her out while she never expected it – with the metaphorical suckerpunch. I went nuclear, poisoned her character in as many circles as possible, turned all of her trusted acquaintances against her, and vanished into the night. Because I had built meaningful relationships with those people as well, the believability of my account and the tactics I used never showed up on their radar as unscrupulous. Her career death was not immediate, but the life is draining away, even to this day, by the damage I’ve done.

By establishing a rapport so highly regarded with another person, the suckerpunch is even more unexpected when everything goes to hell. When I dumped a friend, without active aggression on my part, that I had known for years and who had helped me in many times of need, he may have never seen it coming but he was no more hurt than anyone is when they are dumped. By landing such an unexpected, and ruthless, blow on the person described in this post, they were never able to anticipate it, nor recover from it, because I had built a reputation such that she would be unable to. I was a confidant. I was a friend. I was the destroyer.